POOR BOY, POOR MOVIE

In the not-yet-metro city of Pune, no film - English film - has 20 percent foreigners in a single show. But on the first day of one-of-the-many shows of Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire, the theatre seems to hold a special attraction for viewers from abroad. Most of them are carrying water bottles. Some have dressed up in ethnic wear which we, the Indians, opt for during festive occasions. Like most visitors to foreign lands, their deportment seems to suggest that they can think of Boyle’s slums as the ‘real Indeeah’ very easily. How one wishes one could tell them if that were to be true, every street in London has the Big Ben!

Since that would sound rude, one abstains. Cut to the reel thing inside the theatre where Boyle unfolds a supposedly grand film that has won four Golden Globes and ten Oscar nominations. The director is said to have made a viewer-friendly popular classic. What is great being seldom popular – and vice versa – one wants to see SM. From start to finish. Without stepping out of the hall during the interval. Getting a ticket on the first day seems like an achievement straight out of fantasyland. Such is the power of Mr B and his SM.

God is kind. Or, is He?

No. For, Boyle has made a film that has a weak body and no soul. Given his passion for indulging in all things filthy, let us say that SM is prose in loose motion. The narrative wobbles back and forth, pausing at several phases in the past to show the tragic life of an uneducated boy who finds himself on the hot seat of the game show Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?. The youngster Jamal is a chaiwallah towards whom the game show host Prem (a superstar) shows visible contempt: much like the director’s attitude towards his portrayal of India in general.

If Boyle has an understanding of life in the Indian slums, one surely doesn’t see it. Why he chooses to stay away from the flip side of slums is beyond comprehension: more so, because a few shots of Mumbai’s upper class life would have explained Prem’s scorn and the young man’s life below the poverty line even better. How the Golden Globe-winning writer Simon Beaufoy discovered just one abuse in Hindi that Indians use in the film cannot be understood likewise. The scene showing the Indian superstar (Amitabh Bachchan – a double of course) who signs his photograph for the young boy bathed in shit is the substance of nauseating, vomit-inducing imagination.

As in Vikas Swarup’s utterly simplistic novel on which the film is based, the beginning of the film conveys its climax. Seated on a money-making pedestal, the fortunes of a poor little poor boy have to change overnight. In short, the underdog has to win. Tragedies promise to turn into memories eclipsed by the wealth that transforms his life all of a sudden. So what if he is uneducated? He will find answers to the questions that offer more and more money as he goes along. He will irritate Prem because the latter’s mind is trapped in the vanity of class-consciousness. He will find his childhood love who has gone on to become the mistress of a don.

A tale of pain with a fairytale ending: that is what we expect and get, with the only surprise being the way in which Boyle treats the story. It seems as if he is directing the film for the Western audiences in a manner that is far too premeditated and shallow. If not, he is clearly influenced by the Bollywood of the 70s, which is when some of the worst Hindi films got made. In 2008, Boyle’s film joined the list of the era, making the average Indian wonder why the maker did not check the time for so long.

Lost in a lost world. That is the essence of SM. Unable to ruffle us emotionally, it shows, with appalling indifference, that sad moment in which the young boy’s mother loses her life during communal riots. Although the boy’s life takes a turn for the worse after this episode, the mother's death is shown with such surgical precision that we forget it before five minutes go by. Once the boy wins the entire prize money, we hardly get a glimpse of his ecstasy and disbelief. Instead, there is an abrupt cut, because of which the viewer gets very little idea of the boy’s state of mind. Sorry, My Boyle. But isn’t the plot supposed to be high on emotional quotient?

It is not that SM doesn’t tug at our heartstrings. It does, but for all the wrong reasons. When one walks out of the hall, it is with the feeling that Boyle made the mess of an opportunity to make a good film. As a viewer, everyone is prepared to accept unreality when one goes to see a film. But what could have, but doesn’t, happen in SM's case is that the narrative fails to grip the viewer with its revelations of understanding and sensitivity. Slums appear but as views captured by a stoical camera. When the young boy who has been packed off for police interrogation is subjected to shocks, his suffering is buried by the sight of a fat cop whose presence gives rise to humour. The host feels that Jamal is a cheat, but there is no well-written scene which shows how the latter tries to convince the former. Since a film needs to take liberties with a novel’s structure, shouldn’t Boyle have conveyed the boy’s helplessness as also his inability to understand how happenstance is blessing him time and again?

Dev Patel who plays the adult Jamal is wooden in the initial stages of the film. He picks up later, but has nothing much to do simply since the script has nothing better to offer. As the proud host whose arrogance gets switched on the moments the lights are off, Anil Kapoor does a fine job. Frieda Pinto in the role of Jamal’s lover is a bad choice, but Irrfan Khan comes up with a good show as the inspector interrogating the man. Saurabh Shukla as the plump cop is good, but it is impossible to figure out whether or not his character is supposed to generate humour or seriousness. Among the film’s strengths is the cinematography, and AR Rahman’s background score which tries to elevate the scenes to a much higher level.

If there are so many minuses, how has SM managed to garner so much critical acclaim? The answer is a bit like the mystery behind Boyle’s treatment of the film. It is impossible to understand.